Abstract

The study of legitimation as a mechanism for explaining the stability of capitalism has been largely displaced by studies on individuals’ dispositions towards inequality. Returning to the explanative role of legitimation, we propose an analyti-cal distinction between three mechanisms of legitimation of the social order: social legitimacy, dissimulation, and ideo-logical inversion. These mechanisms share some key fea-tures inspired by classical sociology, while differing in their explanation on how capitalism obtains social validity and endures through time. Specifically, we propose the primacy of the ideological inversion mechanism, as the most plausi-ble thesis for the stability of contemporary societies. From this viewpoint, we suggest a new agenda for theoretical and empirical research on the legitimation of capitalism.